


Blow a Kiss, Fire a Gun

by greerian



Series: Blow a Kiss, Fire a Gun [1]
Category: The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotherhood, Corruption, Evil Corporations, Extramarital Affairs, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, Lesbian Character, Marriage, Minor Character Death, Swordfighting, Vigilante Justice, Vigilantism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 05:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10429812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerian/pseuds/greerian
Summary: So they’re sort of like the mafia: Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Tzipporah, and anyone else who wants to join. If the mafia had a single-minded and mostly pure intent to take down a specific corporation for its back room dirty deeds.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somehow_you_will](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehow_you_will/gifts).



> The first two chapters are drabbles, originally posted to tumblr. I'm hoping to continue this fic, but I can't make any promises.

“ _Tzipporah_!”

Miriam never screams; she never raises her voice. Miriam is their rock, their quiet place, their healer, their heart. Miriam is safe. Miriam is calm.

When Miriam screams her name, Tzipporah whirls around to see - her blade cut deep into the side of someone’s neck, and theirs pierces her side, just above the bone of her hip. They’ve run her through, but their neck is half severed, and that’s just too bad. She doesn’t have the energy to finish them off.

There’s babbling in Tzipporah’s ear - Aaron on the com, asking what happened; Miriam, calling for backup; Moses, giving a calm, cool order - but her focus is on the person who stabbed her. Lazered-in, the world is dark everywhere else, except this person’s face. It’s her husband’s mother.

She’s gasping out as Tzipporah’s knees suddenly weaken; Tzipporah staggers back, desperate to find her footing, and her sword comes with her. It slides from Tuya’s neck, dripping with blood, and hits the floor. Tuya doesn’t recognize her, doesn’t know how she is, but Tzipporah knows. The only woman who may have ever loved Moses more than her, and she’s bleeding out at Tzipporah’s feet.

“Tzipporah!” Miriam cries. “Tzipporah, stand down! You’re wounded!”

That’s right - there’s a sword embedded in her torso, with the tip of it just sticking out her back. Tuya’s sword, and its handle hangs heavy over its wielder. Tzipporah doesn’t move, and doesn’t look away.

She doesn’t remember her own mother; Tzipporah’s beloved sisters were from her father’s second wife. Tzipporah was his survivor, stronger than the illness that took the woman who bore her. She kept that knowledge close to her heart, every day of her life, and used it against the guilt she felt when Rameses’ soldiers died by her hand. It was she or them, and she is a survivor.

But Moses always talked of this woman fondly; she was the one who adopted him, raised him, gave him love in the cold house of Seti. She was his mother, and she loved him.

Tzipporah doesn’t know why she’s here. Tuya has never been one of her targets. She doesn’t engage in the darker side of Seti’s business dealings, and she sure as hell has never been spotted in a warehouse like this at three in the morning during a raid. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be dying.

Her face is screwed up in agony, washed out in the faint streetlight streaming in from outside. Her hands clutch at her neck; she’s wheezing, gasping, and blood drips out around her fingers.

Tzipporah takes another step back, and then she hits the ground.

The pain hits, too; the weight of the sword’s handle tears at the wound and Tzipporah brings up her hands to yank it out. Or, she tries to. Her arms tremble, and now her vision isn’t working right because she can’t see the blade, just the metal beams and pipework of the ceiling in dull, yellow light. The blur of voices is down to static, now, and the light fades faster than she likes it. Faster than is safe.

She can’t pass out until she’s out of here, that’s her own rule for missions. No passing out until Miriam and her magic hands can bandage and soothe; not until she’s safe, they’re safe… Moses is safe. Tzipporah drew a line in the sand and dared him to cross it, when she first came home splattered with someone else’s blood, and Moses did not move. He stays back; he makes decisions. He leads; she obeys. Aaron is safe. He’s too nervous for combat, so he stays at headquarters or with Moses or just outside and mans the technology Tzipporah has never understood. He may stumble and avert his eyes, but the man is never wrong.

And Miriam is safe. Miriam is safety, she’s… she is calm in a storm, she is a warm blanket in the cold, she is a soldier free of scars, unlike Tzipporah.

Tzipporah is not safe. She’s bleeding out on a warehouse floor, and she can’t hear anything now. No one’s dying gasps, no gunshots or sword slices. Her mind is wandering.

She smiles. At least she’s going to take one of Seti’s kingpins with her on her way out.

Then Miriam is there, saying something, pressing down and- _god_ , that hurts. Tzipporah jerks into in, and maybe she’s not as close to death as she thought.

“Hold still,” Miriam is saying. “Don’t move, you’ll aggravate it. Tzipporah, can you breathe?”

Curse words repeat in Tzipporah’s head and she tries her best to hold them back, but whatever Miriam’s doing hurts worse than the stab did, and her focus is blearing out again.

“Tzipporah, stay with me. Aaron is on his way.”

“You’re the expert,” Tzipporah grits out. “Why’d we need him?”

“Transportation,” Miriam replies simply. She’s back to calm, back to soothing - no trace of that scream earlier in her voice. Tzipporah means to say thanks, but she cries out instead, a nasty, warped sound, when a pulse of pain worse than all the others hits.

“Tzipporah?”

Miriam’s face is pale, too, and she reaches out a hand. Tzipporah takes it, fast and hard, and holds on tight.

“Please don’t leave me alone,” she mutters. “I don’t think I’m going to make it without you.”

Miriam screaming, Tzipporah being emotional - it’s an off day for both of them.


	2. Chapter 2

Tzipporah’s recovery is slow. Turns out taking a katana to the large intestine is not a quick or easy wound to heal. It pisses her off. Not because it’s painful and dictates what she gets to eat, but because Miriam won’t smile anymore.

“We’ve had injuries before,” she argues, Moses pacing back and forth the length of her bed. “What makes this one any different?”

“It’s not, Tzipporah.”

“Tell that to your sister.”

“She’s worried.”

“Now?” she presses. “This isn’t a game, Moses. Miriam knows what we do. When we decided to take Seti down, she knew what we were getting into. She knows this is a risk.”

“Of course she does.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“Who says there is one?”

Tzipporah groans. “Are you usually this frustrating, or is it that I’m on bedrest?”

Finally he cracks a smile.

“You can’t tell me you don’t see it, Moses,” she continues. “You know what she’s like, and recently-”

Moses faces her. “You scared us,” he tells her. “I would be more worried if Miriam were acting like herself. It’s only been a week, Tzipporah.”

“And I’m _used to it_ ,“ she counters. “I’m a fighter! This is what I do!”

She sighs when he comes to sit on the bed beside her. That’s never a good sign.

“Tzipporah…”

“I don’t want to hear it, Moses.”

“You don’t have anywhere better to be.” His smirk is tiny but definitely there.

Tzipporah curses.

“Miriam is your sister,” he says, cupping her cheek. “Aaron is your brother. I’m your husband. We care about you.”

“Aaron doesn’t care.”

“I can assure you he’s totally offended by that.”

“Wh- is he listening?” Before Moses can answer, Tzipporah spots the covert mics (yes, more than one), hidden by the light switch and smoke alarm. “Damn it, Aaron. You better not tell her!”

Nothing replies.

“We do care, Tzipporah,” Moses presses. “Look at me.”

“Moses-”

“Look at me.”

She does.

“You got hurt,” he says. “It happens. But not like this. Not this bad. You took a risk and it paid off, and we needed you to take it. We knew about the consequences. That doesn’t mean we can’t feel bad about them.”

Moses always makes too much damn sense. He continues, brushing his thumb across her cheekbone and keeping eye contact. His eyes are dark and understanding and wide with earnestness. Tzipporah doesn’t look away.

“You need to understand, Miriam’s experience was… different from yours. She’s going to respond to things differently. Getting angry with her because you don’t like her worrying-” That’s the furthest thing from the problem. “-isn’t going to help.”

“I know, Moses.”

Tzipporah knows. Miriam and Aaron’s lifetime of hell was so much worse than her three months in Seti’s web of corruption and filth. They were born into it, raised with it, gave half their lives to it before a haphazard police raid got them out. Tzipporah’s father had private detectives on her from the moment she went missing. Their bodies were valued at next to nothing - Miriam has more scars for less fighting than anyone Tzipporah knows. Her own was sold off for over ten thousand dollars.

And yet, Miriam and Aaron are the gentle ones. Tzipporah is the one who gets blinded with rage and empties a magazine clip into the head of one of Seti’s underlings, when the man is already dead. She’s the one with bloodlust, while Miriam heals and Aaron protects.

Tzipporah breaks eye contact. Her hands fist in the sheets.

“She’s worrying too much, though.” If worrying is even it. “Did you hear her, when I-”

“We all heard,” Moses says.

“That’s not normal. Miriam doesn’t scream, Moses, she doesn’t _not_ smile, and she hasn’t done this before.”

“Have you almost died before?”

“Not that she knows of,” Tzipporah shoots back. Not that it does her any good. Moses doesn’t need to say anything else.

Miriam has cared for wounded before. She’s pronounced them dead before. Cared for the bodies, got them to a mortician, wept with families at funerals. She has a big heart. Her mourning hasn’t been fake.

Just because those fighters weren’t in the core, leading group of their ragtag band doesn’t mean Miriam didn’t know them and love them. Moses gathers all sorts to help: ex-cops, current cops, ex-cons, ex-workers for any of Seti’s companies. Anyone who wanted could offer their services. Moses had no scruples anymore.

To his credit, he had tried to take his adoptive father down through legal means. Meetings with lawyers, testimonies to cops, paparazzi tailing him - to find out Seti was better at covering his tracks than any animal in creation, and Rameses learned at his side.

So they’re sort of like the mafia: Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Tzipporah, and anyone else who wants to join. If the mafia had a single-minded and mostly pure intent to take down a specific corporation for its back room dirty deeds.

“Let her be gentle, Tzipporah,” Moses says. Her gaze flicks to him, sharp against his softness. “Let her worry, and care. Your wound will heal, and you’ll fight again. For now…”

For now Tzipporah is weak and defenseless. For now, she has no way of escaping her thoughts.

Moses leans in. Hot breath against her mouth, then lips, catching against hers. She kisses back out of habit.

“I’ll come by later,” he says, standing. “And I’ll make Aaron delete that audio.”

“Do that,” Tzipporah replies.

“Get some sleep.”

She scowls. Her activity options are limited, though, and sleeping is miles better than.. than thinking about Miriam. And that scream.

“Goodbye, Moses.”

“Sleep well, Tzipporah.”

He kills the lights on his way out the door.

Tzipporah remembers in the dark, sitting up, that Miriam and her capable hands, her warm eyes, will be in to change her bandages in a few hours.

She should have told Moses to leave the lights.


End file.
